Once again this Thursday night – and every first Thursday of the each month – Jerry Beck will be the opening act for Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys at the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood.Janet and her boys play authentic 20s jazz music live, and I start the proceedings by providing about 45 minutes of vintage musical shorts and cartoons in glorious 16mm monophonic movie projection. It’s a lot of fun – and if you are in the area, I highly recommend you check out the program. This month I’m showing Fleischer, Terrytoons and Harman-Ising goodies along with some zany live action rareties. Janet and her band are amazing! Here’s a clip of her singing Yiddish Hula Boy in the style of a Max Fleischer Screen Song! Join us!THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2nd, 2004, 8:00 pm
The STEVE ALLEN THEATRE
4773 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood
(West of Vermont, across from Barnsdale Park)
$15 323-666-4268 for reservations
More info at www.janetklien.com

Good day. Here is day two of our contest (which ends tomorrow). The first two people with the correct answer (or what I think is the correct answer) to this question arriving in my email-box wins the dvd prize – 2003 Academy Award Winner HARVIE KRUMPET – courtesy of our friends at StudioWorks Entertainment. Today’s question is:

In 1990, two clay animated shorts by Aardman’s Nick Park were nominated for the Oscar. What was the name of the film that won?

The Contest is now OVER. Today’s winners were Michael Nusair and Todd Jacobsen. The answer was : Creature Comforts

Cartoon Brew reader Marc Crisafulli responded to my recent post about cartoon murals with an additional mural (see above) that he saw offered for auction at eBay. This one included cartoon work by Milt Gross, Percy Crosby, George McManus, and others, along with some pin-up art. Sadly for us, it was created for a popular speakeasy, so it’s a few decades too late to see it in its original location.

On the other hand, New York’s the Palm Restaurant, which I need to get to someday, is alive and thriving–and its walls feature work by everyone from Billy De Beck to Carmine Infantino. (The Palm’s other branches have walls festooned with cartoons, too, although at the Boston location, at least, some beloved characters are seriously off-model.) Here’s the Palm’s page on its wall art, with a short article by R.C. Harvey.

Willoughby’s Magic
Hat (1943)The family of cartoonist Sam Cobean have just set up a new website, Sam Cobean’s World, featuring many of his cartoons, biographical information, photos, articles and obituaries. Included in the site are over 200 photos of Cobean’s original drawings from the collection owned by his estate. They have been organized into a browseable photo gallery. Family member Dan Loomis says:

“We hope to make Sam Cobean as well known by current generations as he was in the 1940s-50s. His untimely death in July, 1951, was a sad loss to the world of humorous cartooning.”

Cobean became a successful magazine panel cartoonist after World War II. Prior to the war Cobean had been an inbetweener and storyman at Disney, then joined Screen Gems in the early forties writing some of the best cartoons that studio ever produced – including the lengendary WILLOUGHBY’S MAGIC HAT, WAY DOWN YONDER IN THE CORN plus several other classic Fox & Crow shorts.

Funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks!Camp Chaos imagines Popeye going anime – a hallucinatory cross between Dragonball Z, Star Blazers and the one-eyed, spinach packin’ sailor man. Hilarious!Check it out HERE before someone gets wise.(Thanks to reader Christopher Merrit for the link)